“Of course,” I said. “Hell, I should. Over the last few years it’s been about the only thing you two could talk about.”
Constance laughed. “It was going to be what got us out of that high school. You know, kind of like this place got you away from the university.”
I wanted to tell her that this “escape” had ended up as bad as my original prison, but I didn’t.
“With this ghost scaring away our good guests and maybe bringing in all the weird ones, the lodge won’t end up being the quiet place we dreamed about. We’ve got to find a way to get rid of her. Somehow.” Her voice trailed off like the end of a song.
“So Fred and I find whatever it is. What then? Does this professor fellow have any ideas?”
Constance shook her head. “None. Fred doesn’t like the idea, either. I think that’s why he wanted to do it alone. I think he’s embarrassed. So am I, really. But we need to try something and we don’t have any other obvious roads.”
I nodded. There was really no decision for me to make. Three-quarters of my mind was scared silly at the idea of making a dive into a lake that had killed an entire town, especially with a “ghost” close by. A damn dumb thing to do by any standards.
But the rest of me was excited at the thought. Excited at the adventure, like I used to be when Fred and I did something the rest of the world considered crazy. And for some reason, right now that excitement scared me even more.
Scared or not, it was Fred and Constance and I couldn’t say no. Besides, if the California professor was pulling a scam, I might be able to spot it.
“How long before the train pulls out?” I asked.
Constance laughed. “Five a.m. tomorrow morning.”
“Ouch. Couldn’t we at least make it seven?”
“Not unless you want to be riding a horse down a mountain in the dark.”
“What the hell ever happened to getting up at a reasonable time?” I downed the last of my drink. “You got someone working on the diving gear?”
“Called the dive shop from McCall a few hours ago and gave them the list Fred put together. It will be ready at four this afternoon.”
“Good. Then the next step is to call Angie and tell her Tuesday struck again. She’s never going to believe this one.”
“Tuesday?” Constance asked as I turned and headed for the phone in my office.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to calm the twisting fear I felt starting to build in my stomach. “Around here we love Tuesdays.”
CHAPTER TWO
Stibnite, Idaho
June 26, 1990
FOR THE LAST five hours I had watched Constance handle her four-wheel drive Jeep as if it were an extension of her right arm. She feathered into graveled corners, accelerated without a jerk, and knew exactly when to downshift to keep the best power to the wheels. In other words, she was a damn good driver.
Five hours of winding, mountain roads from Boise to the ghost town of Stibnite and not once had she taken a corner too fast. And never too slow. Never. There had been a few hundred times when I’d grabbed for the armrest while looking at the fast-approaching hillside or cliff. But each time she’d known the corner and her speed had been perfect. Of course, it always took me a few seconds to catch my breath after those corners, but I knew an amazing show of driving skill when I saw one.
Now we were on the flat ground of the old town of Stibnite and she was still making me grab for the armrest. She cut close to the remains of a large wooden building, swerved around two weathered piles of rock, and started the Jeep bouncing across a small meadow on what looked like no more than a vague memory of a road.
“Old town hall,” she said, pointing back at the building we had missed by a door handle, her voice clear even over the constant drone of the engine and the rattling of our diving equipment. “Last building to be actively used in Stibnite. Abandoned somewhere around 1948, I think.”
I nodded. For the last few miles I had been getting a lecture on the history of Stibnite. In its prime, during World War II, thousands had lived here…now it looked like an abandoned battlefield. Tumbled and ruined buildings, piles of dredged rock, and open mining pits half-filled with stagnant water dotted the obviously leveled valley floor. The site of the town itself stretched up the narrow, steep-walled valley. Before the mining boom, the valley must have been spectacular. Now it was nothing more than a monument to what human beings could do to something beautiful if given a free hand. It was no wonder everyone had moved away when the mines shut down. They probably all went looking for other valleys to destroy. With any luck, they’d all left Idaho.
The goat path Constance was using as a road veered suddenly to the right past a stand of pine and merged into what actually was a road, albeit a low-quality logging road. From the looks of it, the road was only maintained for fire access.
“It’ll be fairly quick from here,” she said. “About eight more miles to the summit. All up hill.”
The road stays this good?” I said, joking. The thought of eight miles on this poor excuse for a logging road seemed no small distance.
“It gets a little washed out toward the top. But no worry. We’ll make it.”
“People find their way into your place?” It didn’t seem possible that, even with the best of directions, I would have recognized those faint tracks across the field as a road, let alone the right road in the maze of old buildings and mining pits called Stibnite.
“Oh, really it’s simple,” she said. “I just took you on the scenic route. We tell our customers to stay on the main road heading up the river out of Yellow Pine. The gravel turns into this logging road about a mile beyond the point I turned and went into Stibnite. There are real clear signs pointing the way. Haven’t had anyone get lost yet. Of course, customers we sign up pretty much know what they’re getting into. That’s why they want to stay at our place. It’s away from things.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, and Constance laughed.
“See what you’ve been missing not coming up all these summers?”
I glanced out over the tops of the pine trees as we climbed away from the valley floor on a road that was becoming no wider than the Jeep plus two door handles, with dirt brushing the handle on Constance’s side and high-flying eagles pecking at the one on mine. There was no doubt that the stunning beauty of the Idaho mountains could make a person stop and stare for hours. But like all beauty, danger went hand-in-hand with it, and right now I was more concerned about the wheel on my side not dropping off into space.
I did the only thing I could do without letting Constance know how scared I was. I grasped my seat belt just below the seat on my door side while forcing my left hand to stay calmly on my leg. And the higher we climbed, the more I hoped she knew how to fly a plane.
Constance didn’t seem to notice the road any more than she had the paved, two-lane road out of Boise. She took each corner at what seemed to be the maximum possible speed, her left hand steering and her right hand resting on the stick shift.
“You know, don’t you?” she said, “that Fred’s really happy about you coming up? I think if this mess with the ghost hadn’t come up, he would have invented something just to drag you away from that plant-filled bar.”
“Did he invent the ghost?”
Constance turned to look at me for a quick moment before darting the Jeep through a dry streambed. “No, I’m afraid it’s there,” she said. “And it’s as real as a ghost can be.”
She didn’t look happy. This ghost thing had her worried far beyond anything I had ever seen Constance concerned about before. I forced myself to look out over the valley without glancing at the edge of the road flashing by, inches from the front wheel.
These were my two best friends and they were hurting. I wanted to help, but what could I do against a ghost? What could anyone do?
Especially this far from anything. It suddenly occurred to me that in the last three hours of driving, we had not met a single car. Not one. As Constance said, this was away from th
ings. A long damn way away.
Below I could see the faint outline of a mountain stream as it cut through the pine and brush. Back down the valley I could see a mountain range that faded into the distance on the clear, summer day. Ahead, there was only up.
***
My ears popped seven times in eight miles.
And, as Constance had warned, the road didn’t get better, it got worse. At one point we had to get out and move fallen rock out of the way. At another tight switchback, Constance had to back up two nerve-destroying times to keep the front end from banging into the hill. The second time she ground into reverse I swore she was backing right out into space.
“Last switchback and we’re on top,” Constance shouted over the noise of the engine as she cut the corner hard and at the same time shifted into low and let the Jeep’s tires eat at the road, spraying dual fishtails of sand and dirt out behind us.
I had completely given up on hiding my fear and was holding on to the dash with both hands. I always thought that as I got older, I would fear death less and less. That basically had come to pass, but what I hadn’t counted on was my increased fear of accidents. Death no longer bothered me. Accidents scared me something awful. Especially when I wasn’t in control. This road would have bothered me even if I had been driving. But sitting in the passenger seat, the eight miles had been pure and simple torture.
I glanced at my watch. Forty-five minutes since we had left Stibnite. We must have gone through twenty switchbacks, across five streambeds, and straddled six miles of washed-out gullies down the center of the two tire tracks. From the first mile I had kept looking up thinking that the summit was only a little bit farther. But with every turn it never came any closer. The mountain just seemed to grow as we climbed it.
But finally, mercifully, the road widened and then cut up on top of the ridge. Constance leisurely wound the Jeep in and out of trees. The summit could have passed for Mid-western flatland, if not for the fact that if I looked real hard through the trees on either side, I could see blue sky and mountaintops for fifty miles in all directions.
The road ended in a widened turnaround with a large Forest Service sign blocking the remains of a trail continuing off through the trees. The sign said, FRANK CHURCH SALMON RIVER PRIMITIVE AREA. NO VEHICLES ALLOWED PAST THIS POINT.
Constance pulled the Jeep off under the pines to the right. Two other rigs were parked among the trees. One I recognized as Fred’s rebuilt pickup truck. The other was a blue Ford two-door sedan. It looked like any standard airport rental car and felt incredibly out of place sitting up here on the edge of the primitive area. I had trouble believing that anyone could even get it up the road. But, short of having it airlifted in, someone must have, because there it sat.
Constance honked two long blasts on the horn, then cut off the engine. The silence seemed louder than the engine. I let go of the dashboard one finger at a time as Constance laughed, then unsnapped my seat belt, and pushed open the door.
The mountain air was as welcome as opening a refrigerator on a hot summer day. I took a deep breath of the freshest-tasting air I could ever remember and let it slowly out, along with five years of built-up tension. The crisp, cold feel of the air let a flood of memories back in. Memories of dives into cold Canadian lakes and the taste of hot coffee while sitting beside the fire afterward. Memories of camping as a kid, helping Dad put up the tent while Mom fixed lunch. Memories of the first nights with Carla at the retreat and how golden her skin looked in the faint starlight.
I took a few more deep breaths to let the memories drift their natural course, then did a few deep knee bends to loosen some of the tense muscles. Ten seconds of mountain air and I was starting to understand why Constance and Fred came up here every summer.
Constance scooted around to the back of the Jeep and started unloading the equipment, piling it on the thick carpet of pine needles.
“It’ll take Fred a few minutes to get the horses and get them here,” Constance said, as I joined her. “I hope he heard us coming up the mountain and got them ready.”
“You weren’t kidding when you mentioned me riding a horse, were you?” I pulled one of the double scuba tanks out of the back and stood it against the wheel of the Jeep. “You know how long it’s been since I rode a horse?”
“Do I win something if I guess right?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the point of guessing?” she asked as she pulled out a large sack of groceries.
“So you won’t laugh when I fall off.”
“I’ll still laugh.”
Before I had a chance to answer, there was a loud snapping of branches and Fred appeared out of the trees on the left side of the clearing. He was riding backwards on a medium-sized brown horse while leading seven other horses.
It was the funniest sight I had seen in a long time. His long legs dangled down the side of the horse, his feet only loosely caught backwards in the stirrups. He looked like Ichabod Crane, except he had on blue work jeans, a red plaid work shirt, and the most beat-up excuse for a baseball cap I had ever seen. He even had the damn cap on backwards.
Constance looked over at me. “He does that all the time. Says it works better when he has to lead more than three horses. I’m waiting for a low tree limb to knock him on his nose.”
I just kept laughing. Fred smiled and tipped his cap as the train of horses filled the small turnaround. He was still the same old Fred. Down in town, he had lost some of his craziness over the past few years. But up here, it was clear that he was his old self. Probably the thin air did things to his brain.
Constance moved to help him with the horses and I followed.
“Glad to see you could make it, barkeep,” Fred said as he dismounted, somehow without kicking the horse in the head. His handshake was firm. His skin felt hard and calloused against my bartender-soft hand.
“Wouldn’t have missed seeing your trick riding for all the money in the world. Besides, that Sunday drive up the mountain is a real thrill a minute.”
Fred chuckled as he unhooked two horses from the string and tied them to a tree. “Constance doesn’t believe in wasting any time, does she?”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Constance said as she led two other horses toward the Jeep.
I held up my hands, fingers curled. “Permanent white knuckles.”
“Comes with age,” Constance said. “And you certainly aren’t getting any younger. Besides, I got us here, didn’t I?”
“And just in time,” Fred said. “Lunch is cooking and I wasn’t planning on waiting for you two.”
I glanced at my watch. It was only eleven in the morning yet it seemed like we’d been on the road a full day. Or more like a full lifetime.
We spent the next half hour packing all the dive gear and supplies on the horses while chatting about everything except the ghost and the lodge. By the time we were done, I was sweating and a little out of breath from the high altitude. But I felt better inside than I had in years. There was something about being out in the mountains with close friends that surrounds a person with a warm glow of belonging. Maybe it was the openness of the air and the trees. Or maybe it was the lack of the confines of buildings that reminded us of our pasts. All I knew was that working there with Constance and Fred made me feel good.
Fred’s “cooked” lunch consisted of ham sandwiches and cold lemonade, with the promise of a better lunch once we reached the valley floor. We ate quickly and before I knew it, I was on a horse for the first time in too many years and headed off into the Idaho primitive area.
***
Two and a half hours later we reached the Monumental Valley floor. My back ached, the insides of both legs were rubbed raw, and my face felt as if it were coated with three inches of dust. I had completely lost any feelings of wellbeing I had had about the trip. Now all I wondered was why anyone would want to do something like this for fun.
Not that it hadn’t been fantastic at the start. The trail along the summit had staye
d wide, winding its way along the ridge for about a mile through open meadows and stands of pine. The clear smell of the air, the warm sun, the power of the horses had made everything seem so easy.
The trail had turned to the right and headed down the side of a ridge into a picture-postcard valley. The steep walls on both sides cut upward to end in linked chains of rocky mountain peaks. Patches of snow still dotted the walls of the valley, reflecting the sun like slivers of mirrors. Far below I could see flashes of deep blue as a stream wound its way through the trees.
At that point in the trail I could look back and see where we had been riding. The cars were parked on a low saddle between the mountain ridges. The valley we were dropping into seemed to dead-end into that saddle.
“It’s nothing but downhill from here,” Fred had said at that point. He hadn’t been kidding. The trail became so narrow and so steep, that I found myself leaning into the hill for fear of sliding off the horse and not hitting the ground for hundreds of feet. Fred and Constance didn’t seem to mind, even the two times we had to stop, dismount, and lead the horses across places where mud and rocks had slid down the mountain and wiped the trail away.
About a hundred yards beyond where the trail bottomed out, Fred led us down into a small meadow beside what he said was Monumental Creek. I let Fred take my horse and the packhorse I had been leading and tie them up while I found a nice, solid rock next to the stream and proceeded to alternate taking a drink and washing my face off with the icy water. By the time I felt refreshed enough to wander back up to the meadow, Constance had a fire going in a ring of rocks near a small grove of trees and Fred had a hammock strung and was already stretched out in it.
“Looks like you two stop here regularly,” I said, pointing at prerigged hammock hooks on the trees.
“Every time,” Constance said. “We take turns cooking and lying in the hammock. Doing the entire trip to the summit is just too much without a rest. We usually stop here for an hour or so. Gives the muscles time to loosen back up. Plus we figured our guests would like it here.”
Laying the Music to Rest Page 3
